At the beginning of October, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán denounced the European Union’s 1984-inspired manipulation of language: “Brussels is creating an Orwellian world in front of our eyes. They buy and supply weapons through the European Peace Facility. They want to control the media through the Media Freedom Act. We didn’t fight the communists to end up in 1984!” The “Peace Facility” is responsible for transferring billions of dollars worth of artillery and ammunition to Ukraine. The “Media Freedom Act” gives European bureaucrats extraordinary powers to censor any speech or ideas they dislike.
Although Orbán is absolutely correct in his assessment of European madness, there is no sign that his warning will have any corrective effect. The Eurocrats are so steeped in self-deluding propaganda that it would be not at all surprising to see them pull another page straight out of 1984 by carving on one of their marble government buildings the same three slogans that adorned Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth”: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” Such is the depth of the rabbit hole into which the European hive mind has descended that too many ordinary citizens would miss the depressing irony.
As if recognizing that Europe’s embrace of censorship, surveillance, and social control inconveniently mirrors Orwell’s condemnation of Big Brother and Big Government to perfection, the British “ruling class” attempted this month to “cancel” Orwell by using an article in The Telegraph to accuse the prophetic genius of being “sadistic, misogynistic, homophobic, and sometimes violent” — in other words, someone who should not be “tolerated” and no longer “deserves” to be read. If “cancelling” the author who warned the world about such forms of slithery government tyranny is not “peak Orwell,” then the crazy train still barreling down the tracks promises to be a doozy.
Americans, of course, are similarly under siege from an Orwellian deep state that manipulates the public by distorting history and undermining the meaning of words. In a nation that celebrates George Floyd as a hero, clings to the “Hands up, don’t shoot” lie as a sacred “truth,” and blames Hillary’s election loss on Russian bots, propaganda is king. The U.S. government fights racism by institutionalizing racial preferences. It supports Black Lives Matter and Antifa domestic terrorists while locking up American patriots as “domestic enemies.” It replaces impartial justice with “social justice” and equality under the law with “equitable” special privileges. “Climate change” communism kills property rights. Meme-makers are imprisoned, but Russia collusion hoaxers are not. Gene-altering serums are called “vaccines.” And generations of judges have replaced the U.S. Constitution with their own postmodern revisions.
When President Trump was elected in 2016, movie theaters in cities across the country actually ran the 1984-released movie version of Orwell’s masterpiece, starring John Hurt and Richard Burton, as some sort of cinematic censure of Trump’s rise to power. At the time, the spectacle seemed bemusing. Trump — the outsider — was clearly beholden to no Big Brother deep state. Far from participating in the insidious programs of “political correctness” that 1984 so effectively damns as the building blocks of totalitarianism, Donald Trump has always been one of the most plainly spoken — and, at times, brutally frank — Americans to take the world stage. Instead of hiding behind riddles, insinuations, and other verbal contortions, President Trump tells anyone who is listening exactly how he feels. Yet the same Marxists whom Orwell criticized used Orwell to criticize their political boogeyman. It was confounding.
Seven years later and the language games have just gotten worse. Anytime a majority of the American people express a preference for something at odds with the permanent “ruling class” occupying D.C. — curbing illegal immigration, profligate government spending, and endless wars, as examples — the U.S. government rejects the public’s wishes as “threats to democracy.” The government insists that its bureaucrats represent the people’s will while expressing dismay that the people’s will could differ from that of the bureaucrats. In other words, an “oligarchy” of “elites” now calls itself a “democracy,” and majority public opinion is ridiculed as “anti-democratic.”
Pretending that authoritarianism is “democratic” makes it much easier to assist dictators overseas who do the same thing. While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shuts down opposition political parties, church services led by priests pleading for peace, and the prospect of free speech, the U.S. government claims that support for Ukraine is support for “Western values.” While the Gazan people overwhelmingly support Hamas terrorist attacks on helpless Jewish civilians, European and American leaders falsely claim that their bloodlust is actually “peaceful” in nature. While Iran’s theocratic dictatorship threatens Israel’s existence and supports the torture and killing of girls accused of violating Shia law, Barack Obama, John Kerry, and Joe Biden have spent the last fifteen years doing the murderous ayatollah’s bidding. In Orwellian fashion, tyranny is defended as “democratic” and “Western” — which should serve as a warning to Western citizens of the direction their “leaders” are heading.
